


Invasive Species

by Ericine



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Corset, Drinking, F/F, Femslash, Femslash February, Hurt/Comfort, Not a Crossover, Slytherins Being Slytherins, Smut, but it's hurt/comfort mirror universe style, they're slytherins tho
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-19
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2019-03-21 10:00:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13738473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ericine/pseuds/Ericine
Summary: "The point is that this Pippa is someone else, somewhere else, and she holds as belief what Kat's been slowly suspecting for months: none of this shit matters right now." Getting to Qo'nos takes some time, so Katrina takes up Philippa's offer for a drink.





	Invasive Species

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Oparu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oparu/gifts).



> This could follow [Space, Filling](http://archiveofourown.org/works/13603890). It could also stand alone.
> 
> For Oparu, who requested, among other things, MU!Pippa and Kat. And has been headcanoning with me for days on end because this damn show has broken me.
> 
> I have a very intense headcanon that prime!Philippa liked the color purple, because her mirror counterpart seems to prefer gold so much, and they're natural color wheel opposites.

The mycelial network may help them get onto Qo’nos, but it’s one jump too many for them to risk Stamets. They’re traveling at normal warp for the meantime, which means that they’re still another day’s travel or so away from their destination, and Pippa - as surreal as she seems on this side of reality - needs sleep.

She retires to her quarters, and beta shift takes the helm. Kat doesn’t have to be told that the shift is thankful to finally have something routine to do on the ship. She pointedly does not pay too much attention to their excitement and goes down the hall. She needs sleep too, and her quarters lie somewhere down the hallway to the right.

She goes left.

Kat has elected to remain on the ship just a little longer. She knows that puts Burnham and Saru a little at ease, and if this plan fails, aren’t they all going to die anyway? Also, she’s tired, and she can afford another day of rest, all things considered.

Burnham and Saru, understandably, can’t bring themselves to look at her. That’s alright with her. She can barely look at herself. That’s part of the reason why she only hesitates a fraction of a second before knocking on Pippa’s door.

“You may enter,” she hears.

Pippa doesn’t come to the door. She supposes she should have expected that. She enters and finds Pippa sitting on her couch in a short, silky robe. It’s the kind of thing she remembers her Pippa sleeping in - the rich purple color, at least, not the length (like Kat, when on duty, Pippa sleeps in a fresh pair of uniform pants, just in case she’s called in the middle of the night) - and she’s a little impressed that she’s committed herself this much to the role, after what she’s heard went down on the bridge earlier today.

Pippa raises an eyebrow. “You can’t possibly expect me to wear  _ pants _ to bed, Admiral. It’s ludicrous.”

Kat realizes she’s been staring too long. She takes a seat across from Pippa. “Sorry. I didn’t intend--” She reaches for words, because there’s no way this woman likes apologies. She knows that without having to ask. “I’m here to drink about it, like you offered.” Pippa  _ had _ offered. That was right before she committed -  _ really committed _ \- to the mission at hand and had willingly presented this Terran woman as an impostor to her crew.

Pippa, her friend, would have never.

Pippa, her friend, is no longer here.

“Of course you are,” Pippa replies, the corners of her mouth turning up. She stands, and Kat suddenly feels like she’s being sized up. “Cognac for you, I think.” Pippa says decisively, and retrieves the bottle from her shelf.

Kat doesn’t protest, nor does she wait for the liquor to warm. She downs the first drink, straight, in one long sip.

Pippa raises her eyebrow and pours her another glass. “Michael was never one for drinking,” she says. “I didn’t like the way you and Gabriel held your liquor. Apparently that’s not a problem here. With you, anyway.”

Kat meets her eyes straight on as she finishes the next glass. “Been drinking alone a lot myself for the past few days.”

Pippa pours herself a double and downs it like it’s water. “Pleasant as you're probably finding that, you don’t have to do that here.”

Kat finds herself wanting, against reason, all kinds of things from Pippa - stories about her universe, about Michael there, about the way that she came up to be this way. The woman strikes her as someone who has been alone for a long time and who is usually alright with that. Maybe that’s her baseline. “Is she like me?”

Short robe or not, Pippa sits the same way she did on the captain’s chair - the same way, perhaps, that she did on her throne - authoritative with a wide stance. Kat wonders vaguely if she bothered wearing anything under the robe at all. She imagines this Pippa doesn’t have to be nearly as vigilant in their world as she’s had to be in hers.

“I thought you didn’t want to talk about her.”

Kat swallows. That had been something she’s told Pippa one of the first times they spoke, but this is...different, somehow. She realizes it’s a way of trying to get to know this woman, maybe, the one who holds their lives - all their lives (she can’t think about that) - in her hands. “I don’t. I just want to know if you drink with her. You said you didn’t like the way she held her liquor. That doesn’t mean you didn’t do it.”

Pippa lifts the glass to her in a small toast. “Observant,” she says, with a hint of approval.  _ The other Katrina was too _ , Kat thinks. What had Pippa called her? Something offensive-sounding. Kitty?

It’s not healthy, but she lets herself ask anyway, because she doesn’t  _ let _ herself do a lot of things these days. “Were you close?”

Pippa almost rolls her eyes. “You’re Federation, so you must mean emotionally. No.”

They finish their glasses in silence, leaving Kat to fill in the blanks.

She makes a decision. It’s officially not the worst thing she can do anymore. She’s possibly already done that, letting this woman step into her friend’s shoes. Into her hair. Into her room.

Kat sets her glass down, letting the hard, cold  _ clink _ puncture the silence. “You didn’t really ask me here to drink.”

Pippa sets her own glass down with its own  _ clink _ , except she manages to make that small of an action look  _ flippant _ . “I did. We’re drinking.”

“I’m not her.  _ Kitty _ . Whatever.”

“And I am not your Captain Georgiou, but that much is obvious.”

Kat’s eyes narrow. “But I don’t have a problem with that.” It’s true. Perhaps they sealed off the mirror universe because others may do what Michael Burnham did - go looking for things already lost and attempt to drag them back with them into a completely different world. Kat’s not like that. She knows the permanence of loss. She doesn’t mind living with that either, even if feels like a nasty, burning tangle that will stay with her in some respect for the rest of her life. 

“Neither do I,” says Pippa, standing, reaching. “So there’s really nothing here to lose.”

Kat eyes her hand for just a moment - outstretched, she could be reaching for Kat’s glass, to pour her yet another drink (Kat wonders if they should blow that to hell and just start drinking from the bottle - Pippa would probably be down with that). But it’s also an opening, a small enough opening that Kat can completely ignore it, though she’s certain that it’s not an accident that Pippa’s robe has slipped off her shoulder just a little bit, so that she can see her thin, strong (beautiful) collar bone underneath.

Perhaps this is how Pippa won her empire - not through the large warlike gestures that the Terrans seemed to favor, but with small, delicate touches just like this.

She doesn’t want to fall for it - anything like this - again. But that hot tangle in her stomach is wound like a spring, and suddenly, it’s unbearable to be sitting here alone like she has been every day for seemingly endless months.

Still, she remembers Gabriel’s hands on her, how they seemed so much the same and weren’t. Kat eyes Pippa’s hand with distaste. “Do I get a choice?”

What she has going for her: in this universe, at least, she would never have considered doing this with her Pippa. Her Pippa was too light, so up in the air even when they were training together on Earth. Kat was grounded. It made them good friends, but  _ this _ \--this kind of thing was for someone else.

The point is that this Pippa is someone else, some _ where _ else, and she holds as belief what Kat's been slowly suspecting for months: none of this shit fucking matters right now.

“In this?” Pippa asks, genuinely confused. Maybe seduction works for power in her world, but as far as she’s concerned, that’s more or less with both parties’ consent. “What would be the point if you didn’t?”

* * *

Kat doesn’t remember how she gets over the small table between them. She imagines she climbed over it - there’s a spot on her shin that hurts like that was the case. But she knows that she’s bare-armed by the time she’s wrapped herself around Pippa’s warm skin (she finds it strange that the other woman is warm - she doesn’t know why she thinks that Terrans would be cold, especially when Gabriel the Terran was warm to the touch, just like hers was).

Kissing this Pippa is hard and rough and foreign - and somehow  _ necessary _ . She doesn’t know how to describe it otherwise. She knows that she probably is projecting now, her rage and her desolation. They race to undress, but it’s not much of a competition - Kat’s in her tank top and underwear by the time she’s undid the knot on Pippa’s robe (a mere formality at this point, because she’s yanked it down from Pippa’s shoulders), and it isn’t until she scrapes her arm on something that she realizes that she’s bitten Pippa’s lip.

She pulls back in time to see Pippa’s robe drop to the floor and the corset (seriously?) that she’s wearing under it. “You sleep in  _ this _ ?” she asks her, more out of surprise than anything else, and Pippa doesn’t answer, just slides a hand behind Kat’s head and up into her hair, until she’s holding a handful of it - not tight enough to  _ hurt _ , but tight enough to make Kat shiver.

Pippa shakes her head, annoyed. There’s darkness behind her eyes, Kat realizes. Well, she is Terran, but this is different, Kat knows. She’s seen it in her patients before, people who have momentarily lost their grounding and are looking for something, anything, to hold on to.  “Do you really want to stop to find out?”

Kat kisses her hard again, teeth too close but tongue soft against hers, and pushes her down onto the couch. She’s half-expecting Pippa to come back at her somehow, end up on top, but instead, Pippa just pulls the straps of Kat’s tank top down to her elbows (Kat doesn’t know where her bra is - it’s like her brain has slowed down all of its processing because it cannot possibly  _ comprehend _ why she’s about to fuck the twisted, foreign, hard shell of a woman who resembles her friend), pushes up, flicks her tongue against one of Kat’s nipples - just enough to make her yelp, and wraps her small, strong arm around Kat’s back.

She’s gripping some of Kat’s hair there with her shoulder, but she doesn’t let go, and Kat doesn’t ask her to.

They’ve stopped for a moment. Kat tries to ignore the throbbing between her legs and lifts one of the arms bracing herself above Pippa on the couch, runs it down the arm Pippa’s using to brace herself. “You’re rough.”

Pippa licks her lips, eyes darker than Kat’s ever seen them, and Kat remembers the sharp burn of the whiskey suddenly. “That’s what you wanted.”

“Don’t tell me what I want.”

Pippa raises her eyebrows, then lets go slowly and moves back until she’s sitting. She rises again - on her knees, this time - and reaches for the insides of Kat’s elbows, sliding her hands slowly up to her shoulders, then down to her breasts.

She can’t help it - it’s the most she’s been touched in months, and she does  _ definitely _ want this. Kat closes her eyes as Pippa thumbs over her nipples. “Well, hurry up, then. Tell me,” Pippa says impatiently. “I don’t have all night.”

Kat suddenly realizes that they  _ might _ have all night, the way this is going, but that’s too much for her to process right now. “I don’t want to think,” she groans, leaning her head back, the tension she’s just taken for granted by now screaming for release on the sides of her neck. “Everything has been silence and thinking and waiting and  _ oh-- _ ” Pippa’s replaced one of her hands with her mouth. “--nowhere to take it.”

Goddamn, her tongue is  _ incredible _ .

Kat doesn’t know why she wouldn’t be, and she bites down on her own lip hard enough to bleed so she can pull away, come up on her knees, and pull the other woman to her - hand on her ass, knee between her thighs, mouth on her ear.

Another tongue flick, this time against Kat’s neck. She swallows. “What do you want?”

Pippa hums, so high-pitched that Kat has to bite down thoughts of her friend. But then Pippa’s hand is between her legs, too little sensation separated from her by thin, damp fabric.

“Oh,  _ fuck _ .”

Pippa’s got two fingers lying on either side of Kat’s clit - so much more than she was expecting, but quickly becoming not enough. She curls her fingers just a little, and Kat’s so wet she can feel the slickness without moving. “Nothing feels in focus here.” Another stroke. “I don’t understand any of this.” Another stroke, and Kat grinds as hard as she can against Pippa’s hand, because she’s going to need for this to start soon, or she’s not going to be able to listen to Pippa anymore. “But there’s something else.” Another stroke, and Kat whimpers (it feels  _ good  _ to whimper, feels good to make a sound that’s just a sound and not something crafted to appease people around her). “I don’t want to think about it.”

Kat loses her hand then - and her balance, because Pippa’s pushing her backwards into the couch. And then her underwear’s gone, her tank top tangled around her waist, and Pippa’s tongue finally goes where she needs it so  _ fucking badly _ .

She hasn’t been touched in so long, and touched like this--

She reaches down and grabs a handful of Pippa’s hair, slows her down, fucks herself on the other woman’s mouth. “You have to suck,” she says (only because it’s getting a little hard to breathe), somewhere between a whisper and a gasp, moving her hips to show her the pace. “Wide,  _ everything _ .”

Pippa hums something that could maybe be a moan, but Kat doesn’t want to think about it too much - it’s vibrating. It’s so  _ fucking good _ .

She loses track of how long it goes on - her throat starts to hurt at some point, and that’s how she knows that she’s been screaming out all of the stress and frustration that she’s left sitting for so many months of loss.

“ _ Pippa _ ,” she hisses - and she’s going to get flack for that later, she’s sure, because she’s told this woman before that she wouldn’t use that name on her, but it’s never stopped the way she’s thought about her in her head. And then something else that’s going to make her listen: “ _ Pippa, please _ . Hard. Do it hard so I can--”

Maybe Pippa’s fast about it because she wants her to shut up. Kat really can’t give a damn, and she comes yelling, rigid, shaking. She hasn’t touched herself in months - that kind of thing falls to the wayside when there’s so many other things burning down around her.

She stills, and Pippa licks her once, long, for good measure, rubbing her mouth on Kat’s thigh.

Kat pulls her up by the hair, and somehow, they get the tank top off her.

This Pippa doesn’t cuddle. Kat isn’t expecting her to, though, to be fair, the couch wasn’t made for this. (The bed just feels disrespectful - maybe Pippa knows this too.)

She leans back into the couch cushions, throat definitely feeling a little raw. Still, even though her arms are shaking a little (she probably should have eaten dinner way earlier that it is now), she manages to run fingers down either side of the Pippa’s corset.

“You’re not going to lose this, are you?”

Pippa knees her aside until Kat is sitting and takes her place, props herself on her elbows and pulls her panties down and away. “Not a chance.”

Kat recognizes armor when she sees it, but who is she to judge? Maybe it’s comfortable to sleep in.

Pippa pulls Kat’s hand up to her mouth and licks the inside of her wrist. “What lovely hands you have.”

She jerks Kat down, and she tumbles beside her. Pippa hooks one leg over Kat’s hip and holds their hands, still clasped, by her neck.

“I can’t move.”

Pippa moves her hand a fraction of the way down so that her fingers are resting on her collarbone. “You can move what’s important. That’s all that matters.”

She’s holding her down because she doesn’t trust her not to kill her, Kat realizes. Was that how things worked in the Terran Empire? Shit.

“Alright,” says Kat. And - what the hell, it’s not like she can move that much anyway - she presses her forehead to Pippa’s. “Then pay attention to what matters.

She kisses her - maybe that’s surprising, because it takes a moment before Pippa kisses her back, and then Kat’s sliding her fingers between her legs.

It’s wet and long and slow and not nearly as rough as Kat expects (except for the fact that Pippa dictates her pace by raking her nails over their clasped hands), until Pippa sinks her teeth into Kat’s shoulder when she comes, and Kat is glad - not for the first time by any means - that their uniforms cover as much as they actually cover.

Pippa lets go of her hand, and Kat finds it’s cramping. She pulls it in to herself and sits up. Pippa leans back, closing her eyes. “I imagine nothing is wrong with you replicating yourself new clothes from in here?”

* * *

Kat dresses, and they sit, once again, across from each other with their drinks - one last one for the night. Pippa puts the robe back on and doesn’t bother closing it.

“Are you feeling more stable?” Pippa asks. The woman is in  _ lingerie _ and still sits like royalty.

Kat nods. “Is that why you offered?”

Pippa shrugs. “It’s an itch one must scratch. No one wants an itchy person in charge.”

In spite of herself, Kat laughs. Pippa raises an eyebrow. “Including you?”

Pippa shrugs. “Of course. But all of you are too--” She does something that looks kind of like a shudder. “You are not. You have not broken.”

Kat feels pretty fucking broken. “How can you tell something like that?”

“You look at me, you don’t see her. You wish you could, of course. But you don’t.”

Kat’s expecting her to ask about Gabriel. Why wouldn’t she? But the question doesn’t come. “Okay, so what was in it for you?”

There’s nothing nice about the way that Pippa smiles at her right now, but Kat still categorizes the look as  _ endearing _ . “I don’t have to tell you that.”

“You could.” She lets the silence fill the air, sipping her drink. It doesn’t bite as much anymore, just feels smooth.

“To Michael, my universe felt very wrong,” Pippa says. Kat assumes she means this universe’s Michael. “Even the light didn’t work right, she says.” She pushes a handful of her curls over her shoulder. “I do not feel that here.”

Kat pulls her knee up to her chest and to the side - less sit, more sprawl. “Weeds grow everywhere, Philippa.”

They meet eyes and sip their drinks together.

**Author's Note:**

> I can't believe it took me this far into February to post a Femslash February fic! I hope y'all enjoyed. :)


End file.
